Introduction: Disclaimer

Dr Angela Puca, Angela: Hello Symposiast! I’m Dr Angela Puca, Religious Studies PhD, and this is your online resource for the academic study of Magick, Esotericism, Paganism, Shamanism, and all things occult. Today, we have a special guest, so it is going to be an interview on Welsh Folk-Witchcraft with our special guest, who I will be introducing in a second. Before I start, just a disclaimer. As you know, my channel is about the dissemination of academic scholarship, and I have interviews with academics, but I also have interviews with practitioners because I think that both are very valuable and important. One of the aims of my project is to bridge the gap between the ivory tower of academia and the community of practitioners. So, when I interview a practitioner, it is very similar to when I am in the field. As you know, I am an anthropologist of religion, so when I am in the field and I interview practitioners, I listen to them and I try to understand their point of view. In no way is this going to be an endorsement; I have to clarify that because of past situations. But now that that is out of the way, I can finally introduce our special guest, Mhara Starling. Thank you so much for coming over and accepting my invitation, Mhara.

Mhara Starling Mhara: Gosh, thanks so much for having me over. I am so excited to be here.

Angela: Yeah, I was telling Mhara that I watched her talk at the WitchFest this year. We were both there as speakers and I attended her talk and it was amazing. It was both very interesting in terms of the content and it was about your book as well, but also the way that you presented. You really have a lot to teach me about stage presence because you are really a great speaker.

How Mhara learned public speaking

Mhara: Well, thank you so much. I try to put my everything into it. Do as my teachers taught me, speak clearly and speak from the huha and all that. And it captivates people I see, so I’m glad that you thought so.

Mhara’s Journey to Welsh Witchcraft
Angela: I should do more of that too, as well. So, tell us something about yourself and your journey in Welsh Witchcraft.

Mhara: So, my name is Mhara, as you have just mentioned when you introduced me. I am originally from an island that is located on the very tippy-top of North Wales, and my first language is not English; it’s Welsh. So, I grew up in a Welsh-speaking community and did all my schooling through the medium of the Welsh language, and that was quite a privilege because that is not something everybody in Wales can say confidently and comfortably. We do have more Welsh-language schools today than we used to, and there is a huge resurgence in the Welsh language to the point where there is a lot of support behind it nowadays, and there are people learning the language across Duolingo and such. But I was privileged enough to have grown up in a totally Welsh-speaking community. And I grew up in a place that was also rather magical – as well. It is very hard growing up where I grew up and not having an interest in anything that has to do with magic.

So, I grew up on Ynys Môn – the Ilse of Anglesey. And anybody who has looked into the pagan history of Britain and such, the pre-Christian history of Britain will acknowledge and accept that Angelsey is a very important place because it was the last stronghold of the Druids according to the classical writers like Tacistus – one of the Roman writers. He wrote about the seizure of Angelsy when the Romans came and slaughtered the Druids because the Druids were seen as a threat to the Roman Empire. It was said that Angelsey, the Island of Anglesey, was the main area where the Druids did their schooling. So it was said that people travelled from all across … not just Britain, seen as a whole … but from all over continental Europe to Angelsey, to Ynys Môn to train as a Druid. We don’t know how true that is, of course, because that is just based on what the classical writers wrote.

But it seems that Angelsey has this image, this identity as a spiritual centre, for the longest time in pre-Christian Britain. And you can see it in the landscape. I always make the joke that you can’t kick a rock on Angelsey without hitting some sort of ancient landmark, an ancient monument. I grew up a five-minute walk from a cairn, a circle of stones where it has been said that human activity has been found there for the last 10,000 years. But this cairn goes back a least two to three thousand years, and just around the corner from that one, just up the road a bit, there is this glorious burial chamber called Barclodiad y Gawres, which is a huge, huge structure, a huge chambered tomb. And so, growing up in that area, in that landscape, it was difficult not to have a bit of a love and an appreciation for magic.

Because as I said, that chamber, that burial chamber, the big one, is named Barclodiad y Gawres, which translates to mean “the Giantess’s Apronful.” So behind these ancient monuments, there was also this body of folklore, this body of mythology that had built up around it. The story behind Barclodiad y Gawres was that a giant was carrying a bunch of rocks in her apron, and she dropped them, and that is what created the structure. Now, of course, ask an archaeologist, and they will tell you a completely different story about how that structure came to be. But it is always fascinating to see how our ancestors looked at these monuments and the stories they created to make sense of them in the world. Because, to them, it was just a pile of very massive rocks, and they didn’t know how they got there, and their only explanation was it must have been a giant.

Those sorts of stories captivated me, and I had a fondness, from a very young age, for things like Fairies, mermaids and witches, giants and wizards. And my teachers really loved that I had an interest in those kinds of things. So, growing up in a rural village area, I went to a school that only had 26 students in total, so my teachers had the opportunity to sit one-to-one with us and to really share our interests. So they would direct me when I told them I loved Fairies and I loved folklore, and I loved mythology. They would push me in the direction of Welsh folklore and Welsh mythology. So I learned through them the stories of the four branches of the Mabinogi, which are old, oral storytelling things that come from the oral tradition, the bardic tradition of Wales that are preserved in mediaeval manuscripts. They would teach me these stories, and a lot of them are rooted in locals, so they were in places that were familiar to me. So there was this giant who was a king, and he ruled from Harlech, and it was like, oh, I’ve been there. My parents took me there last week. Or there was a princess who married an Irish king, and she got married in a village called Aberffraw on the Ilse of Angelsey, and that’s where I’m from, that’s the village I’m from.

So, there was a sense of closeness between these stories. The feeling that these stories were not fantastical tales that happened once upon a time in a land far, far away. They were here, and they were alive and a part of our culture and very much of today, not part of some ancient past. And they were presented to us as if they were history rather than folk tales – they were taught to us as if they were part of our cultural history. So I grew really fond of those things, but then, on the other hand, I also had my grandmother, who was really into oogie-boogie, woo-woo stuff, shall we say. And she liked tea-leaf readings and Tarot readings. She loved to potter around doing things like that for people.

So, she brought me to this interest in the metaphysical side of things. So I had this interest in folklore and this interest in magic, so to speak, or divination and such. When she died, that interest only grew stronger. She was like my best friend in the whole world. She was the only one I ever trusted, or that really understood me. And she brought me this sense of belonging in the world that I didn’t see otherwise. And when she passed away, I just wanted to feel close to her; I wanted to feel as close to her as possible, and I started finding books in charity shops. I remember the title of one of those books was called, “Spells for Teenage Witches.” I was almost a teenager at that point; I was in my pre-teens, and when I found that book, it was like this reminded me of Nain, my grandmother, and I wanted to grow closer to this. And through that I ended up meeting a bunch of witches that lived on the island, actual modern-day witches.

My mother told me about a woman who lived in the village who happened to be a witch; she was like, I think she is a witch and that I should go and ask her. I did; I was bold and brassy, and I knocked on her door and said, “My mum tells me that you are a witch. Is that true?” and she looked me up and down and said, “It depends why you are asking.” And then I ended up saying to her, “Well, I want to learn everything that I can about witchcraft. Can you teach me?” And she did. She took me under her wing, and she became a mentor to me. Through her, I met Christopher Hughs, who is the chief of the Anglesey Druid Order, who runs this modern Order of Druids on the island today. From there, everything kind of snowballed and became my entire life and my entire being. Marrying this love I have for folklore and mythology with an actual spiritual, religious and magical practice that incorporates those beliefs and those ideas into it. So, I always say that my practice is rooted in the landscape from which I’m from. It is inspired and informed by the stories of the past, by the historical accounts we have of witchcraft and magic from Wales. But it is very much anchored in today. So, I never pretend to be something I’m not. I’m a modern-day witch, I’m a modern-day person, I live in the modern world. But I’m inspired and informed by folklore, history, culture, and language. So, all of that informs who I am today as a Welsh witch.

Practitioners and History

Angela: I love that. I think that often, on my channel, I talk about… and especially in my Patron community when we have our lectures, I talk about the fact that practitioners tend not to look at history as it is, but there are also practitioners that actually acknowledge what the history is. And because there is this assumption that if something is ancient and historical, it makes it more worthy or more authoritative. Whereas when something is present and alive and effective and meaningful, it is effective even in itself, I would argue.

Mhara’s book. A section on antiquity and authenticity.

Mhara: Yeah, definitely. It is something I spoke about in my book. I have a whole section on the idea that antiquity equals authenticity. So, for me personally, I’m a bit of an obsessive when it comes to reading about the history of specifically my culture and its very strange history when it comes to witchcraft and such. But at the same time, I sometimes think there is this lack in modern Paganism, especially when people do start looking towards more academic fields and such. There is this lack of acknowledging and accepting that there also needs to be a bit of gnosis, a bit of inspiration that forms and forges the path ahead. We can’t look at just trying to recreate what our ancestors did because we are not living in their world anymore. So I always argue that there are a lot of things in modern Paganism that are not ancient, and we shouldn’t pretend that they are, but that doesn’t make it any less authentic; that doesn’t make it any less real.

One example that I can give from my culture, in particular, is Druidry. So the Druids, we don’t know what the bloody hell they did. We don’t know what they actually did because they didn’t write anything down – the annoying little sods. So they didn’t keep a record of what they did, so we can now look back and say this is what the Druids did, and we are going to do exactly what they did and try and recreate it. We cannot do that. Because the only accounts that we have are whispers and little hints that can be found in historical documents from other cultures that were alive at the same time as the Druids. So I get a lot of people who often reach out to me, and they say, how can there be this whole huge culture of neo-pagan Druidry in Wales and in Britain as a whole if we don’t know what the Druids did? And it is always an awkward one to answer. I know people are looking for that authenticity that comes from antiquity, and it can’t always come from that for us.

So, I’m always excited to talk to people about the Druid revivalism of Wales. It is a huge part of our culture as a whole. In Wales, here today, we have a huge national fesitval called the National Eisteddfod, and the Eisteddfod is a celebration of poetry and art and music and everything to do with our culture and our language. And the folks who run the Eisteddfod are Druids; they are cultural Druids. We refer to them as the Druids, as the Gorsedd and the Gorsedd Druids specifically. There is an Archdruid who runs the event, and there is a whole body of Druids who run it, too. Most of those Druids are Christian. Their druidry has nothing to do with their religious background. It is a cultural thing that they put in place, and this has been going on since the 18th century. It was a huge part of the revival of this sense of identity in Welsh culture that moved away from the homogenisation of British culture as a huge overarching thing. It is a way for us to step out and say, actually, we should be proud of our own language and our own heritage. The people who started the Eisteddfod, or specifically the person who started the Eisteddfod traditions as we know them today, were also responsible for influencing the rise of modern pagan Druidry.

So, a lot of it comes from those same sources. Their influence and inspiration came from looking at these ancient manuscripts, ancient poetry and such that we have here in Wales, but they created something that was also new and alive and obviously spoke to people in a way that sparked something new in our entire culture. And I think that there is a magic to that; there is a magic to the fact that this small idea came to them from this inspiration that came to them from looking at this romanticised idea of the ancient Druids. It created and crafted this sense of national and cultural identity that is still being pushed to this day.

Defining Welsh Witchcraft
Angela: Yeah, that is a nice way to put it. How something like that can actually, well I wouldn’t say recreate, but create something that is inspiring and is helpful for the culture and the folklore of a specific place. So, how would you define Welsh Witchcraft?

Welsh Witchraft Definition
Mhara: So, I think if it comes to defining Welsh witchcraft, I have to do a little disclaimer first and make it clear that my version of Welsh witchcraft is mine alone. It’s something that I have cemented into my practice and my everyday life for me, and I know there are a lot of people out there who are probably Welsh or who have Welsh ancestry or some kind of connection to Wales who might disagree with my version of Welsh witchcraft. But it is what works for me and what I have come to terms with after having been raised in this culture, speaking Welsh as my first language and the way that I have created a practice that works for me – that is a mixture of various different things.

So, my Welsh witchcraft is a witchcraft that, as I mentioned earlier, is inspired and formed by the past. So, I like to look at the historical records that we have of historical witchcraft here in Wales, specifically folk magic, as well. I like to look at the folk-magical traditions that we have here in Wales, and I like to draw as much inspiration from that as possible, as well as mythology or, specifically, the bits and dribs and drabs that we find in the Mabinogi, and mediaeval literature as to the beliefs in magic, sorcery and all these things that we find from older Welsh culture. And I draw these things together, and I root them in the here and now by acknowledging that I am a modern person, and some things that are very modern work – they work. That is what’s important to me and my personal witchcraft.

I don’t base what I do in a day-to-day sense, as a modern-day witch, based on; is it historical? Is it true? Is it something that goes back 3000 years? I don’t care about that, what I care about is: does it work? Does it actually do what it needs to do? Do the spells that I am practising actually do the job? Do the rituals that I am conducting actually do what they need to do? So that is where my witchcraft lies; it’s this relationship, the symbiotic relationship between love and appreciation for lore, history and the culture of my landscape. Whilst also, looking at how we can make it work, so to speak.

So, my witchcraft is inspired predominantly by the folklore and by the history of the magic that is found in my specific area, though I love to look at the culture that is found specifically in North Wales and Angelsey. But I do also like to look a bit more broadly. So my witchcraft is rooted in an appreciation for the land and a love for the land and relationship with the spirits of the land, with the gods of that landscape, and I know it is a bit controversial to call them gods, but that is what I call them. I also have a love and fondness for traditional folk magic techniques that we have used throughout history. And when I do find that those little bits of information on charms and spells and curses – things that were used in history – I love to try and incorporate those things into my practice if they are useful and if they are beneficial and also alter them, if needs be, as some of them just do not work for today’s day and age.

So my witchcraft is a mixture of this inspiration and information that comes from the past but a rooting and an anchoring that’s here and now in the present day. And a lot of it comes from my love of the language, the culture and the land itself. So those three things create the triskele that is my practice. It is the love of the land, the love for culture and the love for language. And it culminates in the witchcraft that I practice today.

What makes Welsh Witchcraft Unique

Angela: What do you think makes Welsh witchcraft different and unique compared to other forms of witchcraft?

The Unique Charactaristics of Welsh Witchcraft

Mhara: Oh gosh. So, there are a few ways that I think we look at things a little differently when it comes from a Welsh cultural context. One thing that I think I have struggled with a lot in modern witchcraft circles lately is that I remember that I recently had a discussion with somebody about the power present in words and the power present in the spoken word. And this person, in particular, that I was talking to was an English person. They were from England, and we were at an event, we were at a conference that was being held in England. We were talking about whether or not you need certain things in witchcraft, and specifically, we were talking about the need for things like accoutrements, like tools and robes and words and such. And she was saying, you don’t need any of that. You can sit and meditate on what you want, and that is enough of a spell; you can make that happen alone like that.

I sort of disagreed. While I understand the idea, the thought that goes behind that, there is a bit of a cultural thing that stops me from being able to fully appreciate that. And that is within our culture words, espeically the spoken word, are animate living things. So it is not just that they are sounds that come out of our mouths, they are literally alive and ever present and powerful in their own right.

So this is an idea that goes back to the bardic tradition of Wales. So, the bards are a class of people that existed throughout Wales, and they still exist to an extent, but they are not as revered as they once were. So long, long, long ago, the bards were bards to kings. They were under the patronage of a king or a ruler or somebody very important. And these very important people would pay the bards to be in their presence and to write poetry about them and such. The thing about the bards is that they were very powerful; they had the power to sway culture and the nation as a whole. So, they had the power to either make or break a king. So they were present, usually in the crowning of the coronation of rulers or kings, as we would call them today. They were present at very important cultural events and festivals, and they had the power to inspire the people. They had the power to drive the people to either think that this king was good or bad. And in which direction they went was very important to the culture of that area at the time. And their power came from words, from words alone. Just the right set of words said at the right time and said in the right way could change the entire dynamic of the culture. So words were considered this animate, living thing that the bards had power over, and those who were able to weave words in an effective way were inherently powerful.

So, this concept of words being powerful was rooted in this other concept called Awen. So we have this idea within Welsh culture – Awen– and it is something that we can trace the word Awen in written records all the way back to about the sixth century. But it is probably something that existed before that; that’s just the oldest document that we have that mentions it. Awen is a really interesting concept because it is very much rooted in modern Paganism. But it is not something that has just sprung up from modern Paganism. If someone is familiar with modern-day Druidry, like if you are a member of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids of the Ancient Druid Federation or any of these modern-day Druid orders, they are probably very familiar with the symbol of the three rays pointing downwards usually with three dots above it and three circles around it.

But what does that symbol, if you ask a modern-day Druid, mean? If they don’t say, oh, it is the symbol of Druidry they will usually say it is the symbol of Awen. But Awen is something that goes really far back into Welsh history.

So the symbol, as we know it, does not have as much antiquity to it – it’s probably from around the 18th century that this symbol started being associated with this concept, this idea. But the concept itself we can trace back really, really far back into history. It is this idea that there is a force that flows throughout the entire world, and this force starts its life in the otherworld. And so, in the Welsh tradition, we call the other world Annwfn. And Annwfn, it translates to mean the very deep. So, ‘ann’ is an intensifying prefix, and ‘wfn’ is a suffix that signifies depth. So it means something like the very or the intense deep of us all.

And this force starts its life in that place, in this deep, otherworldly place. It is formed by some form of divine hands where from which it flows through the otherworld and from the otherworld because the other world and our world, within Welsh tradition, are very deeply connected to one another; they are not separated by a barrier, like a veil or anything like that. You can flow between the worlds very easily, and this force comes from the otherworld and seeps into our world, and then it takes hold of us, and we are moved by it. This force is very much animate and alive; it has its own autonomy and its own identity, and it flows.

So, it is almost described in poetry as it flows like air. The word Awen itself is etymologically rooted in the same origin as the words for things like breath in the Welsh language. So the word breath or breath comes from the word awel, and Awen is this divine, inspiring force. And it was believed that once the bards or once anyone was divinely inspired breathed in the Awen, the Awen would move through them to help them craft something that was beyond themselves as well. So, that usually came in the form of poetry or in the form of prophecy. So, poetry and prophecy were deeply linked as well. So, yes, this idea of Awen is rooted in the bardic tradition. The bards believed that Awen and a lot of their work was about trying to force the Awen to flow through them so they could create powerful poetry that could move people.

So, to me and to anyone who roots themselves in Welsh culture, words are not just pretty words that we say; they are not just pretty fun things that we incant or say during ritual. They are living animate spirits in their own right. When we allow the Awen to take hold of us and we create something like a poem or an incantation or a song, it is divinely imbued, it is inherently magical, and it can change things around you. So words, poetry, songs – all these things are inherently important when it comes to the magic found in Wales. We find this carrying over throughout history as well. So, a lot of early modern charms follow certain poetic techniques because they follow similar rhythmic patterns and such. A lot of the poetry tends to have certain strict rules and be crafted so the Awen can flow through it better.

And the bardic tradition that existed in the past still sort of exists to this day because the highest accolade that you can receive in Wales, the highest kind of honour or award that we give our people, isn’t given to a soldier or a powerful warrior or a noble person or a rich person. The most powerful and greatest award that we give someone in our culture is given to the best poet. So, even to this day, we revere and honour poetry and the spoken word as this powerful and animate part of our culture. It is what moves us; it is what moves our entire culture – the spoken word and our connection to language because our connection to language roots us to the land, and our connection to the land roots us to ourselves. So I think that a huge part of what makes Welsh witchcraft unique to me is this real connection to the spoken word with the language and the heritage that is found through that that connects us to something beyond ourselves.

What affects the effectiveness of magic?
Angela: That’s beautiful. I was thinking, in terms of the witchcraft per se, in terms of the magic, do you think that cultural connection makes the magic more effective? Because you said that you don’t agree with the view that intention would just do it in terms of magical effectiveness. So, do you think that the cultural connection, the use of the word, and the things that you have talked about also have an impact on the effectiveness of magic? Or is it more about the identity of the witch and how they see themselves within their practice because, obviously, witchcraft practice is not just about the effectiveness of magic but also has an entire background and religious and spiritual system around it, a belief system around it?

The language carries the culture.
Mhara: Yes, so I think a connection to … specifically talking about Wales now, the Welsh landscape, the language itself carries our culture and carries our identity. So, our culture is one that has long been suppressed and misunderstood; it is one that is often overlooked. We are often seen as just being a part of Britain, a part of England, specifically. I remember when I went to university, and I met people from all over the world; there were a lot of people who did not know that we even existed, let alone that we were our own country, our own nation, our own culture, with our own language and our own history and such. So, to us, a lot of our identity is rooted in the language itself, which can be a controversial thing to talk about because only just over 20% of the population in Wales speak Welsh fluently.

So Welsh, as a language, is something that sometimes ruffles a few feathers. A lot of people from England see the Welsh language as a threat to the idea of British identity because it breaks down this idea of homogenised British culture. But also in Wales itself because of the suppression that we have been through, because of this trying and attempting to stamp out our culture in favour of this overarching British culture. There are some people who get really uncomfortable when you mention that our culture is carried by the language itself because a lot of people are not afforded the same privilege of being able to speak the language. For the longest time, I went through a phase in my teen years where I didn’t understand why more people in Wales didn’t make more of an effort to learn the language and carry the culture because I grew up speaking it constantly, and I felt like it’s not that hard, I can do it, why can’t other people just learn.

Then when, I started looking into the history of why it is that the Welsh language has struggled for so long, and it is because of this direct kind of concentrated effort from British culture or British homogenised culture or specifically English culture to try and stamp it out. It made more sense to me because a lot of the areas where Welsh isn’t spoken anymore in Wales are very urbanised areas, areas that had a lot of movement, areas that had a lot of people moving in from other parts of Britain and even Europe in order to build a new life. And the areas that went through a lot during the Industrial Revolution. So it’s kind of interesting to look at how the language survived better in more rural areas. I grew up in an area that was quite rural. I had the privilege of being able to speak the language on a day-to-day basis at home, at school, at work, and wherever I wanted. Whereas other people did not get that privilege.

I only just started acknowledging in the last 15 years that it is a privilege to be able to speak Welsh and carry the culture through. But it is still true that the language carries the culture and the older traditions that we have. So, for example, it is harder to find a lot of evidence of older folklore and such in areas where the language was almost stamped out. So we see this tradition of the language almost gripping the culture of Wales so much and keeping people in touch with that side of themselves that pulled them away from the homogenised idea of Britishness and instead towards Welshness. Where I grew up, a lot of people would get very angry if you call them British; they say, I’m not British; I’m Welsh, and that is a huge part of their identity.

So, the language itself is not only something that roots us in our culture and heritage; it’s also something that roots us in the landscape and in our magic. So Ronald Hutton recently did a talk for Gresham College on Finding the Lost Gods in Wales. He talked about this briefly, in one sentence, but it is something that I’m deeply interested in is the idea that the Welsh language was created first and foremost because we can trace the roots of the Welsh language, and it evolved from a common form of Brythonic which was the common Celtic language that was spoken on what we now dub the Island of Britain. It evolved from that common Brythonic to modern-day Welsh eventually. When we trace the roots as to why Welsh was formed and how Welsh became a language, it’s really, really fascinating because it began its life as a language of poetry and, in essence, also a language of magic. It was formed predominantly in order to be a language that poetry could be spoken in. It was a common tongue that poets could use so that all the different Brythonic Celtic-speaking tribes could speak the same language during their poetic verse and their prophecy and everything that poetry incorporated.

But when we look at the way that poetry was used back then it is a very different thing. Nowadays, we think of very depressed-looking teenagers writing poems about the girl that they love at school and such. But if we go far enough back in Welsh history, poetry was almost used as a form of ceremonial magic. Because it was used during rituals or, specifically, ceremonies that were used to make kings, to build up the warriors of the tribe, and to help build this sense of identity and worth in the kingdoms that they were from. So poetry acted as this form of almost ceremonial magic, and that poetry was spoken in the ancestor of Welsh, and eventually, that language became what we now speak – the common everyday Welsh language.

The language itself is inherently magical because it inherently comes from this form of ceremony that was utilised by these bards, who were essentially magicians who could cause all sorts of things to happen in their domain. So when we look at it like that, we see that there is this strong rooting between language, magic, and culture. And I think when it comes to a Welsh-specific context, one of the most powerful things you can do in order to connect to your own magic that is rooted in your ancestry, your local, and your landscape is to learn the language and to immerse yourself in the culture of it. It doesn’t mean you have to become a fluent conversational speaker. It just means incorporating the words we use in Welsh every day. It means learning the native names of the local rivers or the local mountains, hills, and such. It means trying to reject the names that were plastered over the Welsh landscape in favour of acknowledging and embracing the original names that were given to these places by the people who have lived in these landscapes for thousands of years.

So there is, in my view, this connection between culture and magic. There is this deep connection between culture and magic. Through becoming closer to your own culture, learning more about your culture, learning the language, and doing all you can to preserve the culture will give you a firmer grounding, I think, specifically in this landscape. I’m not going to talk for other cultures; they can have their own opinions, but in this culture specifically, I would say that a connection and a reverence for culture will also help you grow a reverence for the land and, in turn, the Gods of that land, the spirits of that land and your own sense of self, your ancestors which is generally just a very powerful thing to do as a witch I think.

E effectiveness of Welsh magic

Angela: And does it also translate into the effectiveness of magic?
Mhara: I think so, yes. When I was very, very young and I first started practising magic, I always thought there was something missing, something missing in my magic. And that was because I was drawing out rituals that I found in books that were written by Wiccans and modern-day witches and such. So I was finding all these books, like I said, in charity shops and second-hand bookshops, like Spells for Teenage Witches, and I was trying to copy the rituals in those books word-for-word. And, of course, those rituals, those spells were written by English speakers, often by Americans and such, and I always found there was something missing, something that was detaching me from the magic I was doing. A lot of the spells still worked, but maybe I didn’t feel the depth of connection that I wanted to feel from them.

The most powerful magic that I would practice, which I found worked effectively all the time and made me not only feel a connection to place but also to myself and made me feel much more rooted in my identity as a witch, were spells that I did or rituals that I conducted that weren’t from books, that were just me just walking up a hill and feeling the power of the wind on a cliff overlooking the sea and screaming at the top of my lungs in honour of the gods of the sea and such. And I wanted something that would give me that feeling but still gave me a connection to a kind of more standardised feeling of witchcraft. And it is only when I started incorporating the names of local deities or words and incantations that were found throughout Welsh history that I started going, oh I’m connecting to something deeper here, I’m connecting to something that is completely beyond myself – I’m connecting not only to my language, my culture and my heritage but also to the land itself, the landscape and everything that has happened here over thousands of years. So it is almost like by embracing the culture it affected the effectiveness and the efficacy of my work to just skyrocket.

So it is something that I push as much as I can when I teach or when I write or anything like that. It’s how embracing those parts of culture can also help you deepen your roots as a witch. It did for me so why can’t it for you?

Structure in Welsh practice.
Angela: And how is a Welsh witchcraft spell structured? Or even a ritual, does it have a specific structure? We are used to thinking of Wicca as having circle casting and then calling upon the elements, there is a certain structure to the rituals. Is there any specific structure to Welsh witchraft rituals? Of if there isn’t a structure are ther recurring steps or recurring things that one has to do?

The class barrier and Welsh cursing magic.
Mhara: I think that with that question, it depends on whether we are talking historically or in a modern sense. Historically speaking, magic was only employed when things were needed. When we are looking at the early modern period, we have the best-recorded evidence of folk magic that occurred in Wales now. Most magic was done because it was a means to an end. It was usually something that needed to be done. It is said that the most effective magic, within a Welsh cultural context, was carried out by people who crossed the barriers of social class and such. So, for example, it was believed that the lower classes, and specifically women, women in particular, were said to be the best people when it comes to casting a curse or any kind of baneful magic. Because they crossed that barrier, that boundary of social class. And we see in a lot of these cursing traditions that they talk about that there is this methodology that they use.

A lot of the magic that we see throughout Welsh folk magical traditions tends to be very theatrical in nature, very over the top. So, for example, a very standard curse that a woman would cast on a man who had displeased her was that she would walk up to him wailing, and she would fall to her knees, lift her arms to the sky and she would start shouting and screaming profanities – so she would start swearing, she would start screaming insults at him. This would just scare the men, and they would just keep doing this. And then they might incant something like [Welsh words], whatever they might say. Which might translate to something like, Oh, the curse of God on those who dare to displease me. And the only way that you could break that curse was by begging their forgiveness and getting them to bless you or by carrying out other folk magical methods of your own. And we see that kind of method, the very theatrical method. These theatrical methods of cursing could go very over the top sometimes.

There is one instance in particular that I love, where one woman fell to her knees and pulled out her breasts, and she wafted her breasts in this guy’sguy’s face and shouted, these yellow breasts have given suck to those who will rinse their hands of your blood. So, essentially, it was a death curse; she was wishing death upon him. And the way that she did that was by screaming profanities and wiggling her tits in his face. And there is something quite powerful in that imagery even though there is something that makes us giggle today, there is a power behind the visual of a man looking at a woman doing that in front of him and being terrified, being absolutely terrified that she wielded such power over him.

There are also instances of charming where people use charms. When we think of charming today, we tend to think of an object that you carry with you, like a luck charm. But in a Welsh context, a charm or a Swyn, as we call them in Welsh swynion, were spoken words, words that held power. They were usually spoken of, they were written down on paper, and these words followed a particular pattern and such. So we have little dribs and drabs like that that we can pull inspiration from and see that magic was theatrical and it was very word heavy. So whether it was the spoken word or the written word, there were a lot of words in it. But we don’t have any instance of a particular method of ritual magic other than what we find in the grimoire traditions that some cunning folk used to employ. We don’t have that many rituals like that. There are a few rituals to conjure things, like the Tylwyth Teg, which require certain things.

But the core kind of themes that I have come across by looking at it from both a mythic and folkloric and historic sense, by looking at all mythology, folklore and history is the first kind of thing that you need really deeply, in order to practice magic in a Welsh context is a connection to the landscape, a connection to the natural world around you. So you need to have a deep connection to whatever nature is found in your local area. The second thing that you need is a connection to language and words. All the most powerful magicians, witches, and sorcerers from Welsh mythology, folklore and even history are said to be very good weavers of words. They are poets; they are inspired folk who can weave poetry in a very effective way to the point where their poetry becomes magic.

One of the most powerful figures we have in our myths is a guy called Taliesin. And Taliesin means the radiant brow. He was born from a witch, and he was very powerful; he has these poems where he talks about himself as if he has been reincarnated over and over again. He is also the greatest poet in all the land, and that is a common theme we find. So, most of the most powerful magicians, prophets, and witches were also deeply connected to bardic tradition and poetry. So you need a connection to nature or the natural landscape around you and a connection to words and the third thing that we see crop up a lot is some form of magical tool being used – being utilised.

The magical tools tend to be most important within a Welsh context, so we don’t have a whole array of tools that would be used or an altar that would be covered in all these tools. There is usually one tool that is the core of the ritual, and that would be either the wand or the hudlath. We can go back and look at stories that extend all the way back to the ninth century that talk about the importance of the hudlath – the wand within a Welsh cultural context. And the wand – I wouldn’t envisage something as we would think nowadays. When we think of wands nowadays, we think of the wand that Tinkerbell uses at the beginning of Disney movies or the wand that is used in films like Harry Potter – a small kind of stick that people waft around. Whereas hudlath, the word used for wand in Welsh translates to mean a yard of magic, so it is a yard of magic. They are usually made of wood, and they are usually about the size of a walking stick nowadays. So they are more like a staff if we are to think of it like that.

The wand is employed by characters like Gwydion, this powerful magician, and some would argue God in Welsh mythology. It is used by his magician uncle Math, who is a magician-king from Welsh mythology. But we also see wands being used in folkmagic as well. For example, in certain ceremonial forms of magic, conjure and summon the Fairies. The Fairies, the Fair Folk of Welsh lore, they use wands made of hazel trees. So wands are an important tool, and sometimes you see wands. But wands tend to be heavily masculine – usually associated with male figures, with male magicians.

Whereas the other tool that we see come up a lot is the cauldron. Though it is tempting to say that the wand is masculine and the cauldron is feminine, that’s not quite true. The cauldron seems to be just neutral. While the wand tends to be almost symbolic of other parts and such, the cauldron tends to be much more neutral in that we see characters like Cerridwen, who is a goddess of witchcraft but also of inspiration, using her cauldron. But we see male characters who have cauldrons as well. They tend to be associated with giants as well. So, it is usually the cauldron or the wand that is the centrepiece of the magical ritual within a Welsh context. So, those three ingredients are the primary things that make a ritual within a Welsh sense. It is the connection to landscape and nature, a connection with words and a mastery over words and poetry and such and a magical tool, usually a cauldron or a wand, to help focus the magic on something. And with those three together, you will create powerful magic.

So, in my book, when I wrote the ritual section of the book, the book was aimed at beginners and people who were interested in Welsh stuff. So, the ritual practice that I laid out in my book isn’t a traditional kind of Welsh witchcraft; it is a ritual that is inspired by Welsh folklore and mythology but is rooted in what a lot of witches today would find familiar. So there are things like calls to the elements and calls to certain gods and such. We don’t see that often in more historical practice, but it is something that would be very familiar to any witches, and it would make the ritual more accessible to them. So, my personal rituals nowadays tend to involve a lot of spoken words and a lot of incantation, which is poetic-based. There are calls to the Awen, calls to that divine inspiring force, and it focuses on a connection to the natural world as well as my connection to culture and landscape. That is how I forge my rituals if that makes any sense.

Do you have to be Welsh to practice?

Angela: Yes, absolutely. And can anyone practice Welsh witchcraft? Or do you have to be Welsh, natively Welsh?

Mhara: So, one bit of misconception about what it means to be Welsh, or specifically, this is where I get on my high horse and defend people. But there is this whole idea that being Celtic, being any form of Celt, because Welsh culture comes under the umbrella of Celtic. So there’s no such thing as one Celtic culture; there is no such thing as this one homogenised Celtic culture. Celtic is a rough umbrella term that academics usually use to encapsulate various cultures that are connected, usually by things like language and art. So, it is mostly language, but there are also artistic things that connect the Celts. Celtic is a very broad word, and there are a lot of debates as to whether we should use it at all.

But one thing that is very, very clear, that everyone agrees with – whether you are an academic who does not like the term Celtic and would prefer that we didn’t use it anymore or whether you are the most LARP-loving, Celtic fanatic that pretends to be a Celtic Shaman whenever you want, one thing we all agree on, mostly, so long as you are well informed, is that the term Celtic has nothing to do with DNA or with blood. Celtic is a term that denotes culture, and culture isn’t something that is carried in blood, race, or anything like that. Culture is something that is rooted in how we live our lives. Our culture is the language that we speak; it is the songs that we sing, the food that we eat, the places that we visit, the things that we do, and the way that we interact with the world. That is culture, and culture is not something that is restricted to a certain blood type or a certain race or anything like that.

So, for example, there are a lot of people who come to me and say, I am Welsh because I found out that I have 3% Welsh DNA. But I always say, but what connection do you have to Welsh culture? What are you doing? And I think that some people really get annoyed when I say that. They say, how dare you try and say I’m not Welsh. And I say, if you are not interacting with Welsh culture, then you’re not Welsh, but that does not mean you can’t be. That doesn’t mean you can’t be eventually. All you need to do in order to be Welsh is to interact with Welsh culture and immerse yourself in what it means to be Welsh, and that is the same for most Celtic cultures.

For example, I’ve got this wonderful friend, this one friend who is really, really close to me, and she was born in Jordan. She was born in Jordan, but she moved to Wales when she was six years old. For me, she is Welsh through and through because she speaks the Welsh language, she has performed at Eisteddfods, she takes part in Welsh culture, and she sees herself as Welsh – fully. But if she were to take a DNA test, her DNA test would not say Welsh. But she is Welsh to me. So, to me, it’s all about culture, not about blood and DNA. If you want to be part of Welsh culture, then you need to back it up by doing something cultural to go with that. So learning about our history, learning about our heritage, learning about our language. You don’t have to become a fluent Welsh speaker because, trust me, there are plenty of Welsh people who do not speak Welsh, but you do need some sort of interaction with Welsh culture and when we think of it in that way.

So, if we were to talk about it in internet buzz terms now, I don’t think that it is cultural appropriation for someone to try and practice a ritual that is found in Welsh magic if they are not Welsh. But I do find it cultural appropriation for them to take something that is Welsh and rip it from its root and turn it into something that it is not and still try and claim that it is Welsh; that is when it starts getting iffy for me. So, one particular example of that, and again, I’m going to ruffle feathers by saying this. The word Mabon, you might know as may-bon – the autumn equinox within the neo-pagan wheel of the year. The word is actually pronounced mā-bon, and it is a Welsh word, and it has nothing to do with the autumn equinox. It was a word that was ripped out of Welsh culture and plastered onto the wheel of the year in the 1970s – not even as far back as Gerald Gardner, Gerald Gardner had nothing to do with it. He never called the autumn equinox Mabon or may-bon. It was plastered by an author who decided he liked the name; I like this name, I love Mabon, I think the autumn equinox is too much of a mouthful and isn’t poetic and pretty enough, so I’ll use the name Mabon instead. And now nobody knows that, and I find that quite disrespectful.

I have talked about it a lot on my account on Searchhow(?). I don’t find it particularly disrespectful that people are using the word Mabon, but I do find it disrespectful that they are arguing with Welsh people who tell them, hey, that is not how it’s pronounced – it’s pronounced ma-bon, not may-bon, there are people who will argue against that and say well that’s my accent, my dialect – no you have the capability no matter what your accent or dialect is. Just say ma-bon instead of may-bon. So it is like that is not an accent; it is a mispronunciation. And what I also find quite rude is the way that people will say, oh, things change, words change, they change their meaning. Because this is a word that has been ripped from its cultural context, and nobody acknowledges where it actually comes from, and that is when alarm bells start buzzing for me.

So if somebody took my book, for example, “Welsh Witchcraft,'” and they practised one of the spells or one of the rituals that were in there and they had a reverence and respect for the fact it is Welsh and rooted in Welsh culture and they acknowledge where it comes from and how it is carried out. Even if they take that and change it slightly, I’m fine with that, but even if they were to take it and completely rip it apart and twist it into something else, they still use the Welsh words that I use and such, but they didn’t acknowledge that it was Welsh, they didn’t do anything like that, that’s when I start getting a bit iffy. So, for me, I welcome all.

So when Welsh people started travelling, say at around the turn of the 19th Century, a lot of Welsh people started leaving Wales because they needed to find new opportunities, they were in poverty and such, and they ended up in places like Canada, America, a lot of them ended up in Appalachia, and a lot of them ended up in Australia, and when they went, they took their culture with them, and they shared it, they shared it with whoever would listen. They shared their stories. And it is the same today in Wales. If you walk into a pub in Wales and ask someone, tell me a story from this region, tell me a story from this region or teach me a song from this region, we will happily teach you; we are always happy to share the culture with people. So it is all about respect, I suppose. It is about respecting the culture, acknowledging where it comes from, listening to native voices when you can, and not trying to tear it apart and turning it into something new. That’s my kind of wall.

Fixation on DNA
Angela: Yeah, I’m familiar with the struggle because I am a researcher of Italian witchcraft, and in the English-speaking world, there is a lot of nonsense about what Italian witchcraft is. Recently, I interviewed an Italian witch because there were a few Americans with Italian heritage who were asking me if I could practice Italian witchcraft because I have Italian heritage or even if I don’t have Italian heritage. I asked a few of my informants, and the answer was always the same, yeah, they can practice Italian witchcraft. They have to move here, speak the language, and be part of the Italian culture. So I find it to be a very American thing, this fixation on DNA. I don’t think I have ever heard those kinds of conversations in Europe or other European countries.

But I hear a lot from Americans. This idea that, oh, I’m 10% Italian or Welsh. What? The culture is not DNA. I address this in my video on cultural appropriation. Because you always when you have to talk about cultural appropriation, first clarify what culture is. And I think that there is this trend, especially in North America, where your culture is in your DNA. That is not something that I had heard about before being in contact with Americans. But what you said also resonates with what I heard from Italian witches. That’s very interesting.

Unwilling Settlers

Mhara: Yeah, and it is always a strange thing to try and tread because when I do get questions like about how it is that people from the United States, or Australia, or Canada, or anything like that would approach these kinds of things if they have Welsh heritage or Welsh DNA or whatever it is. It is always a fine line because I do empathise; I get it. They moved there; they’ve been ripped from their ancestral, cultural background and placed on stolen land essentially, into this monoculture that is very much devoid of any kind of spiritual grounding or connection to the landscape. So I emphasise, but I also wish there was a new way of looking at it where there was respect for the actually lived cultures rather than this obsession with blood and DNA, which can lead to very problematic talking points and such. So, it is always a very hard thing to navigate.

Grandparental influence and Welsh spirits.
Angela: Exactly; the fixation with DNA can lead to very problematic ideologies. I also agree that I empathise. In my case, with the Italian Americans or the Italian Canadians, they want to reconnect with their heritage and their ancestry. That’s very understandable, and I totally respect that. I would just not put a focus on the DNA aspects. So, for instance, if you have a grandparent who was Italian or Welsh, you participated in the culture via your grandparent, and that is already different from claiming a cultural identity based solely on DNA, for instance. So, there has to be cultural participation.

And another question that I have about Welsh witchcraft and your practice, and then we will take some questions. So, if you guys want to ask some more questions in the chat, then please do so. I have saved a few of the questions that you have asked already. So, my last question for now is about deities and spirits. So, what is the view of deities and spirits that you find in Welsh witchcraft? Is there a polytheistic view, or is there an animistic view of deities and spirits? How are they interacted with? How are they seen? Are they seen as objective entities outside of us or archetypes? So what is, more generally, the view of the spirit world, the spirits and the gods, the deities?

Welsh Deities
Mhara: When you approach deities, specifically within a Welsh context. There are two streams, and this is where it gets a bit complicated. So, we have evidence of some of the pre-Christian practices that were carried out in what is now modern-day Wales. At one point in history, Wales didn’t exist. Wales is quite a modern nation, and by modern, I mean it is about 2000 years old. It is not as modern as the United States, but it is modern in comparison to some. The border of what is Wales and what is England didn’t exist, and the entirety of what we now call the island of Britain, the primary island of Britain, which covers England, Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, at one point was all Brythonic. It was all the Brythonic culture, which was shocking to people because they think of Scotland as a Gaelic culture because Scotland, nowadays, speaks a Gaelic language. However, the only reason that the Scottish people speak a Gaelic language is because the Irish Gaelic folks moved over to Scotland and, essentially, took land and made it their own. Before that happened, even the Scottish people spoke a Brythonic, Celtic language related to the modern-day Welsh language. You see that preserved in a lot of Scottish place names and certain things like that.

So we see this connection between what we now call the island of Britain, at one point in the historical record where most of the people spoke a Brythonic, Celtic language, and they were what a lot of archaeologists might refer to as the Celts. And their culture, from what we can gather from very limited resources, because again, they didn’t write anything down, they were a culture that was oral in nature, they didn’t share things by written record and such. So we don’t have as much record as, say, the ancient Greeks or the ancient Romans or anything like that. The pagan version of the Romans and such. We don’t have as much evidence as to what the Celts did as we do for them, but we do have hints here and there. From what we can gather, their culture was one that was heavily animistic, so they believed that the world around them was animate, it was alive, everything had a spirit, and everything was alive.

Before the Romans came to Britain, there wasn’t much evidence for the gods being personified as humans. There isn’t much evidence to show that they had figures of their gods and such. It was very much that they venerated the landscape itself. So a god was a river, and a goddess was the flowing power of the river through the landscape. And they didn’t need to turn it into a human-shaped figure in order to understand that; they just understood the river is alive, it is what keeps the landscape alive and thriving and nourished, she is our goddess, and that is how it was carried out. And after the Romans came, there was this strange idea that when the Romans came here, they just slaughtered all the native Celtic peoples and pushed their culture onto them. But that is not quite what happened; it was like a symbiotic relationship. There was some of that, but there was also a lot of trade going on between the Celtic tribes and the Romans and such.

Once they arrived, a lot of the culture of the Romans started making its way into the culture of the Celts, and we started seeing figures of gods and such being carved out into stone and such. So we have some reference to some Brythonic gods and such. But for the most part, if you were to look up gods and goddesses of Wales today, if you were to look up, who were the gods of Wales, who are the spirits that we turn to in Wales, the list that you will come across are characters like Cerridwen, or Gwynn ap Nudd, or Mabon. Mabon is one of them. Modron or Rhiannon, you will come across names like these. And it will be that Rhiannon is the Goddess of Soverienty and also the Goddess of Horses, and Cerridwen is the Goddess of Witchcraft and Inspiration. Or Gwynn ap Nudd was the God of the Otherworld; he is also a God of Fairies and the King of Fairies.

So you will come across information like that. But all of that information and all of those characters come to us via Christian culture. So, we only know about them because of the mediaeval manuscripts. Mediaeval manuscripts that were recorded and gathered by monks sometime between the sixth and the fourteenth centuries. The manuscripts that we have today are usually dated to around the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries, but we accept and acknowledge that the stories that were recorded in those manuscripts were older than those manuscripts themselves. These manuscripts were like copies of a copy of a copy, and it is likely that these stories came from an older oral tradition of storytelling before that.

So, a lot of people will sometimes get up in arms and get very frustrated when you refer to these characters as gods. Because nowhere in the literature, nowhere in the Christian mediaeval literature, does it refer to them as gods. Of course, it wouldn’t because the Christians didn’t want to acknowledge other gods, did they? So, it wouldn’t refer to them as gods, but we do have evidence that in Ireland, where some of the older gods were recorded in Christian manuscripts as gods. So there is this argument that characters like Rhiannon, Gwynn ap Nudd, Blodeuwedd, and Lleu Llaw Gyffes they are not gods; they are just literary characters from Christian manuscripts, and that is all they are. But then you can’t deny the fact that there are hints throughout these stories to something older.

One thing in particular that is referenced a lot in these stories that are recorded in the manuscripts is Annwn, the otherworld. And the otherworld in Welsh lore is not heaven, it’s not hell, and it doesn’t fit into Christian cosmology, so it is likely that this idea, this concept of the otherworld, referred to as Annwn, is something that comes to us from before Christianity. There are also a lot of references to things like shapeshifting and magic and things that seem congruent with cultures that would have been pre-Christian in nature. Then we have the fact that a lot of the names of the characters tend to be cognate with older Celtic and pre-Christian gods and entities.

The best example that I can give of that is Mabon. I spoke about Mabon a second ago, how the name Mabon was yoinked from Welsh culture and plastered onto the wheel of the year as being the autumn equinox, even though in the Welsh stories, Mabon has nothing to do with the autumn equinox. There is nothing in the story that hints at the story taking place at the autumn equinox; there is no reference to what time of year it is at all in the story. But it is the story of a child, a baby, a divine child. So the name Mabon – ‘mab,’ in Welsh means son and the suffix of ‘on’ means divine or great. So, Mabon’s name literally means the great or the divine son. His mother is Modron. The name Modron can be split up into ‘modr’ and ‘on’, which is essential to the divine or the great mother.

So, he is the great or divine son of the great or divine mother. He was stolen from his mother at a very, very young, tender age. And taken to a prison far, far away. And there is a whole story about how he is rescued and taken out of that prison and such. A lot of people drew parallels, especially in the 20th century and the 21st century and a lot of people started drawing parallels between that story and the story of Core or Persephone in Greek culture. So they started saying, oh, Mabon is the Welsh version of the story of Persephone being raped by Hades. We see that starting to take place in discourses and discussions and such, and it doesn’t quite fit because there aren’t really, apart from the fact that he is a child of a deity who is stolen away, there are no other similarities. There is no reference to the landscape being depleted or deprived while he is gone, nor is there no reference to him coming back and being an explanation for the seasons or anything like that. But people like to draw parallels. So that is how Mabon became the name of the autumn equinox. So people say, oh, this fits, so we will put it there, even though it doesn’t really fit.

But Mabon, his name, can be found and preserved much older. There are references on the continent to a Celtic deity called Maponos. Maponos was a god of hunting and healing, and he is associated with dogs and sacred springs and such. He was a god; we know this because there were inscriptions, pre-Christian inscriptions of the God Maponos. We find inscriptions and references to this God, Maponos, not only on continental Europe in what is now Northern France but also on what is now the island of Britain. There are references to Maponos throughout various parts of Britain, specifically in the North. There are a lot around the South of Scotland, and such is true of Maponos. And there is no denying that it is likely that the name Mabon came from the name Maponos. Especially because there is the name Matrona, Matrona probably became Madron, Maponos became Mabon, and we see these cognates, these parallels between Mabon and Maponos, Madron and Matrona. We see lots of links between these medieval Christian manuscripts and the characters preserved within them, as well as older deities and themes that can probably be linked back to a pre-Christian past.

So, though the manuscripts themselves
date to a period that is Christian, and there are a lot of people who like to look at them purely as mediaeval literature and nothing else, I like to argue that there is evidence that these probably carry echoes of pre-Christian beliefs. So, in modern-day Wales, modern-day Pagans will refer to their gods by the names that are found in the Mabinogi. So names like Rhiannon, Cerridwen, Mabon, and Madron are the names that we will use during our rituals to refer to our gods. But there is also the argument that even beyond that, even if they have no reference, even if there is an argument that can be made that they are not gods, they were never gods in the first place, I would argue they have become gods now through the process of apotheosis.

The process of apotheosis is the idea that something can be made divine over time. So these characters like Rhiannon and Llŷr and Pryderi and Gwynn ap Nudd who are found throughout our myths, and stories and legends and tales that are really, really popular across Wales, they’ve become almost emblems of what it means to be Welsh. They’ve carried Welsh tradition for so long. Poems have been written about them, songs have been sung about them, and they are still a huge part of the living culture of Wales today. And though you could argue that you could wander around the entirety of Wales and you will never find an ancient shrine to the Goddess Cerridwen, archaeologists have never found an ancient shrine to the Goddess Cerridwen. But you can find a shrine to the Goddess Cerridwen now, behind me, in my flat. You can find a shrine to the Goddess Cerridwen at the Goddess Temple in Bala next to Llyn Tegid, where her story takes place. There is an entire temple dedicated to her there now.

So the idea that these can’t be gods because they are not ancient gods is, number one, probably wrong because we do have some kind of reference or echo of an older deity behind them, but even if they don’t, they are gods now – they are gods now. So, it is a polytheistic faith nowadays. It is also animistic, I very much echo the the idea that animism is a huge part of our lived reality, and it is also a faith that is rooted in a love and a connection to the landscape itself because their stories and their identities are rooted in their locales, a huge part of our cultures. I hope that makes some kind of sense.

Audience question Bards and Einigen the Giant.
Angela: Yes, absolutely. Thank you for answering. So, I will start answering questions from the audience. Frater RC is asking does your book have much on the Bardic in it or anything about Einigen. I’m not sure how to pronounce it correctly, but Einigen the Giant, perhaps.

Bardic influence and new book on Welsh Fairies.
Mhara: So, in terms of the Bardic stuff, yes. There are references to the bardic tradition, the evolution of the Welsh language, and the influence that the bardic culture has on Wales today, as well as on magic; there is a lot of that in the book. I do talk a lot more about it in my book that is coming out this year. Later this year, I have a new book coming out which I think a lot of people might overlook because it is a book on Fairies; it’s called “Welsh Fairies”, and it is coming out in November of this year or October – one of them, I cannot remember. And that one will explore themes of the otherworld and gods and such, as well as Fairies because the link between Fairy folklore and the bardic tradition and gods is deep, deep, deep in Welsh tradition. So I do talk a lot about it in “Welsh Witchcraft”, but if you do want to learn more about it, I do talk about it in my next book, I have made videos on my YouTube as well, and there are going to be more coming. Even if you don’t want to buy my books or support me in a monetary way, I do have free content about it as well on my podcast and on my YouTube channel.

Sorry, I forgot about the last part. I don’t talk about the giant. I do talk about other giants but not that one in particular and haven’t quite yet. But that is just yet, and maybe one day.

How does a disabled person connect with nature?
Angela: Spidey is asking, How would a disabled, housebound witch stay connected to nature? I can’t get out much.

Overcoming impediments to being in nature.
Mhara: So I have a lot of disabled friends and friends who have chronic illnesses and such, and they are also witches, and they navigate how to be a witch and navigate their disabilities or their chronic illness. There is a lot of guilt, I think, that comes around it. Now, I can’t speak on their behalf because I don’t have a disability or a chronic illness, but I have been friends with them for so long I kind of noticed that there is a lot of guilt around it because a lot of books and such that will talk about this practice of witchcraft as if you constantly need to be going on three-hour-long hikes and wandering down to the river and jumping into sacred wells and doing all these things that sometimes just aren’t possible for you and your abilities and whatever is going on with you in your life at the minute. There are a lot of factors that come into play where you can’t do that.

Even when it comes to things like mental health, I’ve known lots of people who struggle with depression and go through periods where they cannot leave the house. And they struggle with how they connect to nature in that way. The biggest advice that I have given is probably not the best advice, but it is all I can really give is to acknowledge and remember that nature isn’t always something that is outside ourselves; we are nature, we are literally nature ourselves. So by connecting to yourself, your own body, your own rhythmic flow, by being kind to yourself, and by acknowledging what you are able and not able to do, you are already in tune with nature in that regard. But you can also acknowledge that nature exists around us in the world all the time.

You can sit and connect with the birds that fly around your appartment building. If you have a garden, I don’t, I don’t have a garden so I cannot even do this myself, if you have a garden then even sitting on the grass in the garden for like 10 minutes a day, can be a huge, huge thing. I know myself, personally, I have moved recently so I don’t live in a rural kind of village anymore.

When I used to live in a village, I would go for walks all the time, I would go to the beach all the time, and so on. And I’ve moved now to a rather busy city where any connection to forests or beaches is a long, long way away, so I don’t get to connect as much. But I found that just even going to the park and sitting for a bit has really helped me to appreciate the fact that it doesn’t seem to matter what we as humans do to the landscape; nature still prevails. I love going to those places in the city where nature has taken back, where roots are growing out of the ground, where things like that are happening. But honestly, I just watch the cycles of nature and get in touch with what’s on your front door and out your window. That’s also connecting to nature, so don’t let anyone tell you that it is not.

But also your own body is also a temple of nature itself. That is what I will also say, especially, especially, within a Welsh context, we spoke about it earlier, the power of breath, the power of words, start attuning yourself to your own breath and your own Awnn and that, in itself, is deeply, deeply visceral and transformative. I don’t know if that is any help, but I hope that it can offer some guidance.

What distinguishes Welsh witchcraft?
Angela: I think it was beautifully said; thank you. Lord Inquisitor is asking if there are any unique elements of Welsh witchcraft that distinguish it from European or other British traditions. I think you touched a bit on that already. But maybe to summarise.

Wales and the witch trials.
Mhara: Yes, absolutely. So, there is one part of Welsh witchcraft history that I didn’t touch upon, and that is the way that the Welsh responded to what we now refer to as the ‘witch craze’ that took upon Europe. I know a lot of academics don’t like that term anymore, but the period in time, in the early modern period, when witch hunts took place. When people were being persecuted under accusations of witchcraft. Wales had a really strange relationship with witchcraft during that period – very, very strange. We share a border with England, we share a border with England we don’t have water that disconnects us, and borders over here are not like borders elsewhere; there is no kind of wall that separates us from England; we can just walk between England and Wales, and despite that, despite the fact that we have no clear border, no water that separates us or anything, we had an entirely different culture this side of the border to what the English had on their side. 

So, to give you some numbers, some figures historically speaking, there were upwards of almost 2,000 people that were taken to court under accusations of witchcraft in England that we know of. Upwards of 2,000 people, and of those 2,000 people, there were upwards of 500 people who were executed or persecuted and found guilty of witchcraft. When we compare that with Wales, the figures are vastly different. So keep those numbers in mind, 2,000 people were taken to court under accusations, and 500 people were executed or persecuted. In Wales, the number of people that were taken to court under accusations of witchcraft was around 40, and of that 40, only around three of four people were found guilty. And of those three or four people found guilty, most of them were not executed.

So we didn’t have this craze, this hysteria that seemed to take place across most of Western Europe, which saw people constantly persecuting on accusations of witchcraft. And there are a lot of theories as to why this is and why we didn’t have as many witch trials. One theory talks about how the Welsh were more obsessed with thieves at the time because if we compare the records, we can see that more thieves were persecuted during that period. So it was almost like the Welsh were more concerned with their cheese and their sheep being stolen than they were worried about witches.

Another theory, which I quite like, but I know a lot of people who study the early modern witch trials don’t like, is that the Welsh were more likely to blame Fairies for any wrongdoing. Like if you were going to blame a supernatural entity for any mischief, malice, ill-wishes, or anything like that that happened to you, any bad luck or misfortune and such, you were more likely to blame Fairies than you were witches. Oh, so being like it’s Julie down the road who cursed me, you were more likely to go, oh no, it’s those silly, stupid Fairies who have done it again, and I need to call the local cunning woman and have her put some anti-Fairy charms around my farm so that they don’t do it again.

But another theory that I quite like as well is that the belief and the culture of magic were just different here, and I think that theory is uplifted by the fact that we didn’t even have a native word for the witches that we put on trial. When in the Welsh-language courts, when people were put on trial for accusations of witchcraft, the word that they used to accuse them was ‘wits’ or ‘wich’, which was a Welshification of the English word witch. We didn’t even have a word for this idea of a witch in order to persecute people. It is also really interesting to point out that where the majority of witch trials did happen in Wales, they were in very urbanised areas and very anglicised areas, so areas that had a heavy population of English.

So, we see a lot of witch trials along the borderlands and in big urban areas. We don’t see it happening as often in rural areas. It is almost as if the English influence bought the witch trials here, and the Welsh were like, we don’t know what that is. We do not know what a witch trial is or even what a witch is, despite the fact that we have numerous words in our language to describe what we would probably call witches today. We have so many, we have swynydd, we have gwrach, we have gwiddon, we have dyn hysbys. We use so many terms to describe people who practice magic, and yet when we took people to court for accusations of witchcraft, we didn’t use any of those words; we borrowed the English word because it was such a foreign concept to us.

So there is this theory that perhaps the Welsh just had a very different relationship to magic. We couldn’t understand the idea of magic being purely of the devil. It just didn’t make sense to us. And even in those witch trials that did happen, we never see mention of the devil. The devil never comes up. There is no insinuation that the belief was that witches were under the work of the devil, as we see in England or as we see in other parts of Europe. There just wasn’t that association. Witches were seen as people who were sometimes in cahoots with Fairies or sometimes in cahoots with local spirits, but for the most part, they were people who could practice magic. They were good if you needed help, but they could also burn you, so you had to be careful when you were around them. I just love that fact; I love the idea that they didn’t buy into it as much as the folks over the border did; they didn’t have as many witch trials. So I think that tells us something about the culture of witchcraft and magic here in Wales.

A Black American with a Welsh name.

Angela: Thank you. And The Torch is asking, I am a “Black American.” I recently found out my surname is of Welsh origin and was always fascinated with Celtic and Welsh magic, Would me, being a “Black American” prevent me from practicing Welsh magic?

Conecting with Welsh culture from anywhere in the world.
Mhara: I’m going to say something controversial. The only thing that might hinder you even more than being Black is being American. Sorry. There are Black Welsh people. There are people here in Wales who are Black who are very much Welsh. More Welsh than I am in some cases. And I don’t think that would hinder you in any way. The biggest hindrance, as we were talking about as we were talking about DNA and culture, is whether you interact with the culture. So, the fact that you have that connection, you know that your surname is of Welsh origin, and that is already something to start on. Looking into where that surname comes from and where it is most common in Wales, could you possibly do a family tree? I know that is not possible for everyone, but if you could, could you trace back where your ancestors were? But even if not, you could look at where that surname is most common in Wales and maybe look at the culture of that specific region. And then start interacting with the culture. Learn a little bit about the Welsh language. Learn a little bit about our history.

An important thing I would say to all people watching who have an interest in Welsh things, whether you have Welsh ancestry or not, but in particular, especially if you have Welsh ancestry if you want to embrace that Welsh culture, you start looking into things like what is the difference between terms like British and Welsh. What does the word Welsh even mean, and where did it come from etymologically. There is a huge movement right now in Wales to stop using the word Wales and Welsh. There is a huge movement to rally to stop us from using Wales and Welsh and instead use words like Cymru and cumraeg, which are the native words for who we are. Because the word Welsh comes from a rather negative stereotype about us. So it is important to look into these things and connect more with the culture than it is to focus on the DNA or the blood or anything like that. Wales is a modern nation; we have people of all races, all nations, and all cultural backgrounds who live here today and are still very much Welsh. And it is not a hindrance, I don’t think, in any way.

If you are American, you are across the sea; you have that barrier. But the biggest barrier will be that you didn’t have the privilege of being able to grow up in the culture, so now you have to connect with it in a different way. And if you are watching this, it means you are already doing that a little bit. You are already looking for a little bit of an in into Welsh culture, but I would also say to anyone who is in the United States and in Australia, there are a lot in Australia as well. There are a lot of diaspora, I never know how to say that word, diaspora, diaspora? There are a lot of diaspora groups in various places nowadays who are uplifting Welsh culture and talking about the culture of what it means to be Welsh-American, Welsh-Australian, or Welsh-Canadian. So find groups like that as well. If it is safe and comfortable to do so, approach it that way. The biggest thing is to try to connect with the culture. But the fact that you are watching this and might read my book or might consume more of my content means you are already doing that. So, keep at it, essentially.

Struggles with Welsh Identity

Mhara: The only thing I would add to that is I have also had my struggles with identity when it comes to being Welsh. So, it is not unique to people who aren’t born here. Just know that there are people who were born here, who speak the language as our first language, who still sometimes get the feeling of, do I actually belong? I grew up in a very rural area as not just a Welsh woman but a queer woman who didn’t fit in. I am also neurodivergent, so all of that, being autistic, and being queer in a rural Welsh place made me feel like I didn’t belong; I wasn’t allowed to embrace my Welsh heritage and culture because I didn’t fit in with what it meant to be Welsh in a more modern sense.

A lot of modern Welsh culture is built around what your accent sounds like. I don’t have a particularly strong Welsh accent. A lot of it is built around rugby and football and farming and all these things. And there were a lot of feelings when I was growing up that I didn’t belong. And I couldn’t wait to leave. I couldn’t wait to leave Wales. That was my biggest thing when I was younger when I was a teenager, and I was being bullied tremendously, and I just couldn’t wait to leave. And now I look back, and I can’t believe I did that; I can’t believe I had those feelings. Because now, I embrace what it means to be Welsh, and I say ‘sod that’ to anyone who tries to tell me I am not Welsh enough.

So yeah, if you ever feel you are not good enough to be Welsh, if you are participating in the culture, if you are learning Welsh and you don’t feel you are learning quick enough, or if you are somebody who grew up in Wales and you don’t speak the Welsh language, don’t let anyone tell you that you are any less Welsh because of that. You are just as Welsh as anyone else. So, if you feel that you don’t fit fully, I do sympathise because I have felt like that. It is important that we acknowledge those feelings and that they don’t mean anything at the end of the day. We belong, and we are allowed to be here.

Books for Welsh folklore
Angela: Last question, and then we can wrap up. Book references for Welsh Folklore?


Book Recommendations
Mhara: So the easiest book references that I have are the things that are available for free. You can find a lot of things for free on things like the Gutenberg Project. In the public domain there are a lot of things that are in the public domain nowadays. So you can find PDFs of them online. A lot of them are from the 19th century and such, and so they are written a little weirdly, and sometimes they are a little bit difficult to read, but they are treasure troves of knowledge. One of my favourites is Elias Owen’s Welsh Folk-Lore. So Elias Owen – Welsh Folk-Lore. His book goes into various different folk tales, various different folk customs, beliefs, and practices. It will teach you lots of stories that are completely Welsh. But it will also teach you beliefs and practices, and there is an entire section on witchcraft, charms, and magical practices that were carried out and such that he recorded.

One that I would personally try and avoid, but it is very hard because they are free and available everywhere, are the books by Marie Trevelyan. Keep an eye out for the name Marie Trevelyan. I would say to still read them. You can still read them if you so wish, but take anything that is in Marie Trevelyan with a pinch of salt. Because Marie Trevelyan was known to embellish her sources and make a lot of things up. So, a lot of it is not as accurate as one would hope. She is one that I would avoid, but I still like to read them from time to time to try and figure out where she got things from, and they are available for free.

There is also Wirt Sykes’ British Goblins, which, by the title, you wouldn’t think had anything to do with Wales, but it is. British Goblins is, until I’ve just written my book recently on Welsh Fairies, there was not really a comprehensive guide to Welsh Fairies other than Wirt Sykes’ British Goblins. It is essentially a huge book that talks only about Welsh Fairy traditions, Fairy customs, Fairy beliefs. So Wirt Sykes’ British Goblins, Elias Owen’s Welsh Folk-Lore, T. Gwynn Jones’ Welsh Folklore, any of those are really, really good. You can also read my book if you want to purchase a book. I have just been working on my new Welsh Fairies book, which is more on folklore, and I also obviously have the podcast, the YouTube, all of that where I think I have done a few videos on book recommendations and such, so if you want to look into those it will give you a bit more of a deeper grounding. But I hope I’ve mentioned a few things to you now that might be worthwhile.

Angela: Thank you so much, Mhara. And I was about to ask you where can people find you but you kind of already mentioned it. So to anybody of you guys who are interested in Welsh Witchcraft and Welsh Folklore subscribe and follow her on any of the platforms. And you find everything in the description box. So anything that you want to add before we wrap up?

Find Mhara online
Mhara: All I will say is that I am like a rash, so now that you’ve rubbed up against me, I’ll be everywhere. You’ll be applying your anti-Mhara cream soon because I will be popping up everywhere. If you want to find me, I’m everywhere, I’m on every social platform under @Mhara_Starling just as it is written on the screen, and yes, I have my Welsh Witchcraft book, and I also have a new book releasing in the Autumn of this year, Welsh Fairies. So keep an eye out for that one, and if you’d like to learn more, do come and find me elsewhere.

Angela: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much Mhara for coming on. It was a great interview and I am sure the audience loved it.

Support Angela’s Symposium

Angela: To all of you guys, I hope you enjoyed the interview, and if you did, don’t forget to SMASH the like button, subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already – activate the notification bell so that you are always notified when I’m live, or I upload a new video and share this video around so more people can know about Welsh witchcraft. And, as you know, this project can only exist thanks to your support. So, if you have the means, I would really appreciate it if you would support my work with a one-off PayPal donation by joining memberships here on YouTube, my Inner Symposium on Patron and Ko-fi. You can also check out my services on drangelapuca.com. So everything will be in the description box, all the links, and in a pinned comment. So, thank you all for considering it.

And I hope you will stay tuned for all the Academic Fun.

Bye for now.